New ways to acquire laurels

Do people think laurels should be convertible for all currencies? It could be something like 30k karma, 25 badges of honor or 100 dungeon tokens for one laurel (The exact numbers are up for debate, of course). This way, players can achieve ANet’s vision of “progression” while doing what they enjoy in GW2. Although you can get laurels through dailies, it is very slow and impractical for alts, which means ascended items still rewards fractal players much more than others.

They just added the kitten laurel system 2 days ago. And by doing this they have added a second way to get ascended gear. They have also repeatedly stated they’re working on making them accessible through other means(such as Wvw). God have some kitten patience.

As for getting laurels in another way than achievements. Hell no. Then people would be trading in their karma and gold for ascended.

They just added the kitten laurel system 2 days ago. And by doing this they have added a second way to get ascended gear. They have also repeatedly stated they’re working on making them accessible through other means(such as Wvw). God have some kitten patience.

As for getting laurels in another way than achievements. Hell no. Then people would be trading in their karma and gold for ascended.

This has to do with design direction, not patience. It is not hard for ANet to create an item vendor that sells laurels. And yeah, people would trade in their saved karma/currencies for ascended. So what? Those people were doing activities that they considered fun. For many people this excludes fractals. If they had spent their time doing fractals, they would have ascended items. If people spent enough time doing fun stuff that would’ve allowed them to get ascended items if they were doing fractals, why shouldn’t they get ascended items?

Also with the numbers I’ve given, it does not exactly make ascended items easily obtainable. For 240k karma you can get full exotic armor, but it only buys a fraction of an ascended item.

Btw I understand people are saying that ANet plans to make ascended items obtainable in WvW etc in future updates. I’m slightly concerned that the current laurel systems is that update. If not, I’m just suggesting an easily implementable way to allow WvW and other players to get ascended items.

I certainly hope so because it’s hard to get excited about 1 laurel per day. Getting alts setup with ascended gear will turn into yet another grind and I’m not sure I can stand more of it. The rewards for PvE achievements still isn’t even close to the rewards from fractals or dungeons, and we still have no rewards in WvW.

Also, the only reason why the daily achievement have been acceptable is that you can do them fast, and solo. By trying to bring us a combo finisher achievement it’s obvious that Anet doesn’t understand this.

This is somewhat frustrating. GW was focused on PvP which most people loved. However, GW2 keeps adding in PvE content when people want PvP content. I mean you can add the laurel system in WvW so easily yet they try to force us to do dungeon runs for the monthly. The dungeon runs aren’t even fun and you also need a group to do them. Dungeon runs are probably the dumbest thing ever introduced to the MMO genre. What happened to do open world pvp for boss drops -_-; the closest thing this game has that combines PvE and PvP elements is WvW. At the very least, add the laurel system in there.

A laurel exchange could be interesting (though not necessarily at the rate suggested by the OP) . Looking at Nightbringer’s calculations makes one realize just how long laurels alone would stretch out.

What happened to do open world pvp for boss drops -_-; the closest thing this game has that combines PvE and PvP elements is WvW. At the very least, add the laurel system in there.

For what it’s worth, before I realized that you could revive NPCs I went to WvW to get the daily revive achievement for the laurel and others are mentioning the ease of getting the dodge achievement by charging one decent sized zerg.

This is somewhat frustrating. GW was focused on PvP which most people loved. However, GW2 keeps adding in PvE content when people want PvP content. I mean you can add the laurel system in WvW so easily yet they try to force us to do dungeon runs for the monthly. The dungeon runs aren’t even fun and you also need a group to do them. Dungeon runs are probably the dumbest thing ever introduced to the MMO genre. What happened to do open world pvp for boss drops -_-; the closest thing this game has that combines PvE and PvP elements is WvW. At the very least, add the laurel system in there.

There’s also a WvW component to the monthly, and it takes about as long to get those WvW kills as it does to run 7 fractals. Seems fair to me.

All the dailies are easily achievable in WvW, probably easier to complete them in WvW in fact … so the laurel system is already in WvW.

“I’m not a PvE, WvW, or PvP player – I am a Guild Wars 2 player”
Tarnished Coast – Dissentient [DIS]
All classes

This is somewhat frustrating. GW was focused on PvP which most people loved. However, GW2 keeps adding in PvE content when people want PvP content. I mean you can add the laurel system in WvW so easily yet they try to force us to do dungeon runs for the monthly. The dungeon runs aren’t even fun and you also need a group to do them. Dungeon runs are probably the dumbest thing ever introduced to the MMO genre. What happened to do open world pvp for boss drops -_-; the closest thing this game has that combines PvE and PvP elements is WvW. At the very least, add the laurel system in there.

There’s also a WvW component to the monthly, and it takes about as long to get those WvW kills as it does to run 7 fractals. Seems fair to me.

All the dailies are easily achievable in WvW, probably easier to complete them in WvW in fact … so the laurel system is already in WvW.

Technically the laurel system is already in WvW but I hope you can see that it currently takes 2-3 months of playing at least half an hour each day for a WvW player to kit out with ascended items, and it is much quicker to obtain them in fractals. However, not everyone finds fractals fun.

This is somewhat frustrating. GW was focused on PvP which most people loved. However, GW2 keeps adding in PvE content when people want PvP content.

This is not the same company or the same development team that created GW1. It is simply the title branding and lore theft wrapped in a new package with an entirely new game created by a new team in a new company. At some point you either accept this or walk away.

Unfortunately for me I keep poking my fork at the cold meal on my plate.

This is somewhat frustrating. GW was focused on PvP which most people loved. However, GW2 keeps adding in PvE content when people want PvP content.

This is not the same company or the same development team that created GW1. It is simply the title branding and lore theft wrapped in a new package with an entirely new game created by a new team in a new company. At some point you either accept this or walk away.

Unfortunately for me I keep poking my fork at the cold meal on my plate.

Actually, there are a LOT of people which enjoy PvE but loathe PvP, too. Yes, even in GW1. There was a design principle behind having a huge PvE world, four really large open world PvP zones and sPvP in the Game
I agree though that all three should be equally cultivated (although I’ll never set foot in sPvP and only rarely visit WvW).

This is somewhat frustrating. GW was focused on PvP which most people loved. However, GW2 keeps adding in PvE content when people want PvP content.

This is not the same company or the same development team that created GW1. It is simply the title branding and lore theft wrapped in a new package with an entirely new game created by a new team in a new company. At some point you either accept this or walk away.

Unfortunately for me I keep poking my fork at the cold meal on my plate.

Two words- Anger Management

And secondly, you’re wrong, the majority of the team behind GW2 is the exact same team that was behind GW1. They took the game in a different direction, and they informed the GW1 players they were going to be doing so from the very first second that they announced a sequel. If you don’t like it, Guild Wars 1 is still playable.

I’d like to update my opinion to say that this idea is sounding better the more I think about it. Alternative methods to get laurels could be a good idea if people want to avoid the irritation from the daillies.

The exact things that irritate people in the daillies will vary. For some it will be crafting or such, for myself it was the artificial feeling I got engaging a mob and deliberately not killing it just to get the dodge achievement. I’ve never done anything in GW2 that felt so contrived and deliberately gaming the system and I don’t think I liked it much. I’m worried that I’ll continue going that way as long as the daillies are the only way to get laurels.

The new daillies really are about the same as the old ones as far as the content and irritation factor of pushing you do things you normally might not but there is one very big difference. Now the rewards for them have been incredibly elevated.

I never really minded the irritation from the old daillies because a bit of extra money and karma wasn’t anything major. If the annoyance wasn’t something I wanted to deal with that day, I could ignore them and nothing much was missed.

The laurel rewards, on the other hand, are very impressive. And now suddenly I am paying a great deal attention to daillies and their irritation of how they induce players to do things they normally would not is now being magnified because of that attention.

An alternative way to get laurels by using the non-money currencies players acquire without actively needing to change how they play would be very helpful IMO.

Out of interest, since this seems to be an issue for people who ‘want to play how they like’ and dont want to do dailies would you be fine with a reverse system where Laurals could be traded for badges of honor or dungeon tokens?

The two things I think people are missing is this systems purpose was to get people active out in the world. Its not fully implemented yet either. Eventually other acheivements will also reward Laurals if I understand correctly. We will also see a system where we have choice over what we want to do to achieve our dailies.

Further, they structured the rewards system of laurals around the concept that you couldnt just grind dungeons or PvP for hours to get them. That would make it as much of a grind as the daily thing. The pricing of the laurals is based on the fact that it takes time to earn them.

They are trying to allow different sources of game play to be rewarding rather than just making one source the ‘best’ method. The dailies themselves youll usually get doing most PvE content.

I think that the fact that they decided to roll out the laurel system and daily system in fragments is the issue.

Here’s what people thought of GW1 when it first came out: http://tinyurl.com/bntcvyc
“A release is 7 days or less away or has just happened within the last 7 days…
These are the only two states you’ll find the world of Tyria.”

No, I like laurels as they are, but we do need more ways to obtain ascended items. Including crafting (jewelcrafting feels a lot less useful now) and WvW.

I totally agree, laurels will take time to obtain, and not everything in the game needs to cater to 24hr a day grinders that want it all now now now now. Play steady and consistent and you will get your laurels with time.

And crafting should be a useful and expensive alternative to obtaining items, it helps to prevent the game from being “Item Based” rather than “Skill Based”.

GW has always been about titles/skins/accomplishments where you obtain items to play the game, NOT play the game to obtain items, and there is a wealth of difference there. That is what sets GW apart from other games in its class.

I like to bash this company with their cash shop RNG and DR. But I do believe that in time they will be adding alternative options. Why not now? Well let’s say besides the laurels they had made it possible to exchange WvWvW and fractal tokens for ascended gear. That would leave people that don’t play fractals or WvW at a disadvantage cause those players could buy the ascended gear as soon as the update went live.

That would result in 100s of qq threads on the forum. Granted they allready messed up when fractals came out. I believe they are trying to avoid the same thing. Chances are that more options will become available in the following months when things have evened out a bit.

Or else they might just want us to buy more bankspace and are just dragging it out due to lack of content.

I totally agree, laurels will take time to obtain, and not everything in the game needs to cater to 24hr a day grinders that want it all now now now now. Play steady and consistent and you will get your laurels with time.

Well the problem I have is that I work on weekdays and often won’t be able to play at all, but I have lots of time to play on weekends. That means I miss out on 5 laurels a week. I’m not saying ascended items need to be dished out immediately, I’m saying you should be able to work towards them whatever you choose to do, and making laurels convertible with other currencies is the simplest way to do this.

GW has always been about titles/skins/accomplishments where you obtain items to play the game, NOT play the game to obtain items, and there is a wealth of difference there.

Ummm… are you sure you thought that statement through? The whole reason people are complaining about ascended items is that they have to “obtain items to play the game” on par with everyone else, and that the process to obtain these items are not fun. In GW1 and games like Dota 2, you play the game to play the game.

This is a bad idea. One of the good aspects of laurels is how they equalize everyone – the grinder who plays 10 hours per day and the casual who plays 1 hour per day are both getting at most one laurel per day. This helps to cull grinding, as grinders realize they are not being rewarded more than casual players. Being able to get more laurels through grinding (aka in exchange for gold, karma or whatever) goes against the entire point.

“I think that players are starting to mature past the point of wanting to be on that
treadmill, of being in that obvious pattern of every time I catch up you are going to
put another carrot in front of me” – Mike O’Brien right before Ascended weapons

This is a bad idea. One of the good aspects of laurels is how they equalize everyone – the grinder who plays 10 hours per day and the casual who plays 1 hour per day are both getting at most one laurel per day. This helps to cull grinding, as grinders realize they are not being rewarded more than casual players. Being able to get more laurels through grinding (aka in exchange for gold, karma or whatever) goes against the entire point.

This is a bad idea. One of the good aspects of laurels is how they equalize everyone – the grinder who plays 10 hours per day and the casual who plays 1 hour per day are both getting at most one laurel per day. This helps to cull grinding, as grinders realize they are not being rewarded more than casual players. Being able to get more laurels through grinding (aka in exchange for gold, karma or whatever) goes against the entire point.

Except grinders can already obtain full ascended in fractals.

So you want to give grinders even more easy rewards? That’s not solving the problem, it’s making it worse.

“I think that players are starting to mature past the point of wanting to be on that
treadmill, of being in that obvious pattern of every time I catch up you are going to
put another carrot in front of me” – Mike O’Brien right before Ascended weapons

So you want to give grinders even more easy rewards? That’s not solving the problem, it’s making it worse.

Lol I don’t understand your reasoning at all. Fractal grinders already have full ascended items, they don’t need to grind laurels for that. If your concern is that grinders will convert currency to laurels then make tons of gold, ANet can simply raise the exchange rate so that it’s not economical. The only other thing available to grinders are the cosmetics available for laurels. I don’t think the cat tonic is going to imbalance the game.

Lol I don’t understand your reasoning at all. Fractal grinders already have full ascended items, they don’t need to grind laurels for that.

Thus, they can use laurels for everything else. If you think giving grinders free access to ectos, lodestones and tier 6 crafting materials wouldn’t hurt the game…

“I think that players are starting to mature past the point of wanting to be on that
treadmill, of being in that obvious pattern of every time I catch up you are going to
put another carrot in front of me” – Mike O’Brien right before Ascended weapons

Lol I don’t understand your reasoning at all. Fractal grinders already have full ascended items, they don’t need to grind laurels for that.

Thus, they can use laurels for everything else. If you think giving grinders free access to ectos, lodestones and tier 6 crafting materials wouldn’t hurt the game…

My main concern is with ascended items. I want to be able to play different builds and alts on WvW without having to grind too much, or at least to be able to work towards ascended items without grinding fractals or having to log in everyday for 3 months. If you read 1 sentence after that quote, you will see that your concern is simply eliminated by making the exchange rate for tradeable laurel rewards un-economical for grinders.

Irrelevant. ArenaNet has to be concerned about everything, not about a single kind of item in the game. It would be significantly wiser to add more ways for people to get ascended gear than to add more ways for people to get laurels.

“I think that players are starting to mature past the point of wanting to be on that
treadmill, of being in that obvious pattern of every time I catch up you are going to
put another carrot in front of me” – Mike O’Brien right before Ascended weapons

I seem to have read somewhere that the Dev’s were planning to give more Laurels related to the Achievements that ppl had accomplished; but that they had to figure out how to make it fair considering some folks have salvaged 10k+ items and have a lot of achievement points that are only focused in one area

Irrelevant. ArenaNet has to be concerned about everything, not about a single kind of item in the game. It would be significantly wiser to add more ways for people to get ascended gear than to add more ways for people to get laurels.

Sorry, I still don’t see why this is a problem if the exchange rate is such that the profit from grinding laurels for t6 mats is not out of proportion with grinding anything else in the game. You can already trade karma and dungeon tokens for gold anyway.

This is a bad idea. One of the good aspects of laurels is how they equalize everyone – the grinder who plays 10 hours per day and the casual who plays 1 hour per day are both getting at most one laurel per day. This helps to cull grinding, as grinders realize they are not being rewarded more than casual players. Being able to get more laurels through grinding (aka in exchange for gold, karma or whatever) goes against the entire point.

Interesting notion but I don’t see it culling existing grinding, just not adding an additional outlet for grinding.

I would guess the system was meant more as an equalization between hardcores and casuals rather than specifically targeting grinding. I suppose a currency exchange would disrupt this one system in the game that tries to have such an equalization.